Love - Forever Changes
July 30th 2008 02:04
Forever changes is the ultimate beautiful, paranoid, dissonant, end-of-the-decade suicide note from the city of broken dreams. A gang of earthlings fronted by ethereal, handsome, tragic Arthur Lee, Love summed up the late sixties, somehow embodying the promise of that decade (the success of the civil rights movement, the stirring of subcultures, the politicisation of youth and the explosion of pop culture and music-as-art) and the flipside - the fin-de-siecle nightmare (LA gothic - Altamont, 'nam, the demise of the Kennedys, acid burnout, excess and disillusionment).
Forever Changes feels like an open-roofed drive along the wide promenades of Los Angeles, with its haciendas, its carparks, its canyons, its diners, chain stores and gas stations, its festering underbelly, its grotesque wealth, its oppressive open space, its lost souls and its casualties. The city of the Mamas and the Papas on the one hand and Charles Manson on the other.
On this album it's a city recalled by the melancholy flamenco trumpet solo of Alone Again Or, the deceptively upbeat opening track; the menacing conscript's lament A House is Not a Motel; the psychedelic psychobabble of The Red Telephone and the shimmering existentialism of You Set the Scene. And through it all, the young Arthur Lee, at the height of his beauty and power, singing:
This is the time and life that I am living
And I'll face each day with a smile
For the time that I've been given's such a little while
And the things that I must do consist of more than style
This is the only thing that I am sure of
And that's all that lives is gonna die
And there'll always be some people here to wonder why
And for every happy hello, there will be good-bye
There'll be time for you to put yourself on
Everything I've seen needs rearranging
And for anyone who thinks it's strange
Then you should be the first to want to make this change
And for everyone who thinks that life is just a game
Do you like the part you're playing
The story of Love is only more poignant 40 years later, because we all know how the dream ended.
PS: Forget The Doors. They weren't in the race.
Forever Changes feels like an open-roofed drive along the wide promenades of Los Angeles, with its haciendas, its carparks, its canyons, its diners, chain stores and gas stations, its festering underbelly, its grotesque wealth, its oppressive open space, its lost souls and its casualties. The city of the Mamas and the Papas on the one hand and Charles Manson on the other.
On this album it's a city recalled by the melancholy flamenco trumpet solo of Alone Again Or, the deceptively upbeat opening track; the menacing conscript's lament A House is Not a Motel; the psychedelic psychobabble of The Red Telephone and the shimmering existentialism of You Set the Scene. And through it all, the young Arthur Lee, at the height of his beauty and power, singing:
This is the time and life that I am living
And I'll face each day with a smile
For the time that I've been given's such a little while
This is the only thing that I am sure of
And that's all that lives is gonna die
And there'll always be some people here to wonder why
And for every happy hello, there will be good-bye
There'll be time for you to put yourself on
Everything I've seen needs rearranging
And for anyone who thinks it's strange
Then you should be the first to want to make this change
And for everyone who thinks that life is just a game
Do you like the part you're playing
The story of Love is only more poignant 40 years later, because we all know how the dream ended.
PS: Forget The Doors. They weren't in the race.
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